As early as 1983, London Weekend Television (LWT) was experimenting with extra hours on Friday and Saturday nights during its Nightlife strand, which pushed back closedown until after 2 am.
The station's Jobfinder service (launched a year beforehand) was expanded from a single hour after close-down to fill the remainder of the night until TV-am took over at 6 am.
Meanwhile, Granada Television took a more restrictive approach – during 1987, the station introduced a Nightlife strand, which saw programming hours extended until around 3 am on Friday and Saturday nights only.
A short-lived joint schedule was introduced by Central, Granada and Scottish Television when the companies began full 24-hour transmission on 13 February 1988, but was abandoned within a few months.
Thames's Into the Night strand began in June 1987 with broadcasts originally running until around 4 am, extending to a full service on Monday 17 August 1987.
Feature segments included Street Cred with Paul Thompson, Video View with Steve Allen and Kate Davies, Rowland Rivron in The Bunker Show, Tim Westwood's N-Sign Radio, Emma Freud's chat segment Pillow Talk, Geoffrey Cantor's video segment The Axeman, Barbie Wilde's video review for The Small Screen, and quiz show The All New Alpha Bet Show hosted by Nicholas Parsons, whilst cult TV series Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons and Batman were also frequently seen.
Although it proved a success, Night Network was never broadcast nationally as Central opted out of the entire programme from the start to provide its own schedule.
[6] On 2 September 1988, four of the smaller ITV companies (Border, Grampian, Tyne Tees and TSW – joined from 3 October 1988 by Ulster – began 24-hour broadcasting with the introduction of Night Time, a part-networked service provided by Granada Television's presentation department in Manchester and intended to help the smaller ITV stations who were unable to provide a service of their own.
There was also a limited number of home-produced programming such as Granada's Nightbeat, The Other Side of Midnight (hosted by Factory Records' Tony Wilson),[7][8][9] The Hitman and Her (and replacement BPM), Quiz Night, Movies, Games and Videos, Get Stuffed,[10][11][12] Stand Up[13] and LWT's Cue the Music.
During 1991, Anglia, HTV and TVS discontinued their own overnight strands and began carrying a new ITV Night Time service from London, provided by Thames from Monday to Thursday and LWT from Friday to Sunday.
For the first time, both London companies utilised the same on-screen branding throughout the week – the only notable difference being LWT's near non-use of a continuity announcer at the weekend.
Around this time, original programming for the network included LWT's Cue the Music, Dial Midnight, ...in Profile, The Big E,[17] Noisy Mothers,[18] One to One,[19] In Bed With Medinner, Night Shift, Get Stuffed and Thames's Video Fashion,[20] albeit airing in differing timeslots depending on each strand's schedule.
Imported output increased with featured shows including Night Heat, Soap, Three's Company, The Time Tunnel, Too Close for Comfort, The Equalizer and American sporting programmes.
On 1 January 1993, the new ITV franchise holder for London weekdays, Carlton introduced a new Nightime [sic] service, airing from Monday – Thursday nights and simulcast by Meridian and Channel Television.
New original programming was also produced for the network including Bonkers!, Bushell on the Box, Carnal Knowledge, Club @vision,[21] Cyber Cafe, Cybernet, Curtis Calls,[22] Hotel Babylon,[23] God's Gift, Late and Loud, The Paul Ross Show, Pyjama Party, The Lads and Rockmania.
The Nightshift was axed in October 2015 and replaced by After Midnight, a rolling service of regional news and local programming highlights from the STV City channels.
Following this, the slot was filled with repeats of some of ITV's general entertainment or factual programming, most of which carried on-screen British Sign Language for deaf viewers.
Most of the ITV stations experienced great difficulty in selling advertising slots for the overnight schedules – many companies were not convinced that the low viewing audiences were enough to justify buying airtime.
In most cases, stations who were unable to sell advertising overnight simply replaced commercial breaks with public information films or interval captions.
During the 1990s, when advertising space couldn't be sold, an intermission took place between programming, with a message showing simply "Back Soon" and a music track by composer Curtis Schwartz, titled Beat This, playing through.
[26] During the 1990s, commercials for premium-rate phone chat lines and edited versions of infomercials for firms such as Teledisc and Time–Life appeared rather prominently inbetween regular advertisements.